I have to confess that if this were an American film, I’d probably have guessed that Le navire étoile had been made in the Fifties. And yes, if you’d told me it was a TV movie, I would still have thought it came from the Fifties. After all, we are talking about a film in […]
Read more "Le navire étoile [The Spaceship] (1962)"I’m really not sure what to make of this one. Certainly the blurb on the posters isn’t any help. Whatever else we’re talking about here, it isn’t “A Science Fiction Road Picture.” Admittedly, that term “road picture” has strayed a bit from its origins with the endless series of “Road To…” movies Bing Crosby and […]
Read more "The Rising Light (2013)"Mainland China has not produced many horror films. Not that I’m sure Beauty Head of the Haunted House is a horror film. In fact, it is about as unclassifiable as any genre film can be. Certainly there are horror elements, but there are also a lot of other things which do not neatly fit into […]
Read more "Xiong zhai mei ren tou [Beauty Head of the Haunted House] (1989)"Ah, yes, the mixed reaction. I’ve ended up watching several of Drew Maxwell’s ultra-low budget films lately. I was reasonably impressed by his Dark Nemesis (2011), and went in search of his other films. I was mildly surprised to learn that he also directed a film I’d already watched, the mostly okay but unmemorable Guardians, […]
Read more "The Sleeper (2007)"There are a lot of obscure — and often borderline — science fiction films from before the 1950s I still haven’t gotten around to watching. Sometimes it’s because they can be very hard to find, and sometimes it is just because I decided to watch something else instead. But if there’s anything that will get […]
Read more "Le monde tremblera [The World Will Tremble] (1939)"This is one of the rarest of Toho’s Tokusatsu films. But what the heck, I managed to see it anyway. Mind you, while I didn’t exactly see it in the worst way possible — after all, the quality of the film itself was quite good — I came fairly close. I couldn’t find any subtitles […]
Read more "Shuto shôshitsu [Tokyo Blackout] (1987)"I guess you never quite know what to expect from a British film. If I gave you a simple plot description of this one, you might get the impression that it was some sort of Frankenstein story. Well…technically it is. Mostly. But it sure doesn’t look like one. Doctor Peter Blood is an incredibly brilliant […]
Read more "Doctor Blood’s Coffin (1961)"Not every film needs to be brilliant. Instead, what we all long for, what the little kid in all of us is really looking for, is an all too brief moment of fun, a few minutes of cinematic escapism, with no need for earth shaking themes or heavy drama. We just want to be thrilled, […]
Read more "Portal Runner (2021)"A man (Sharlto Copley) wakes up in a pit full of dead bodies. He has no memory of who he is or how he got there. When he climbs out and finds a handful of others in a nearby house, he discovers that none of them remember who they are, either. The house is well […]
Read more "Open Grave (2013)"(aka, Alien Hunter) Honorable Mention I’m not sure I would call Welcome to Willits a horror comedy. Yeah, I know a lot of people are calling it that. There are funny moments, and there’s a fundamental absurdity to the whole concept of this film (although it takes those absurdities seriously). But I still wouldn’t call […]
Read more "Welcome to Willits (2016)"
rivets on the poster 